MILWAUKEE - Tears fell and candles flickered Thursday night at a vigil for Fort Hood victim Capt. Russell Seager, whom colleagues and students remembered as a man who always believed in them.

"Dr. Seager believed in me when I stopped believing in myself," said Viseth Douangprachanh, one of Seager's students at Bryant & Stratton College. "Now I can never tell him what that meant to me. Because of him I'm a better person."

Douangprachanh and other students who spoke at the vigil said through tears that Seager motivated them with positive encouragement even when others doubted. That was part of what made Seager a fixture at the college, where he taught in the nursing and medical assistant programs since May 2005.

The vigil was held in front of Bryant & Stratton, 310 Wisconsin Ave. in Milwaukee. Seager, 51, of Mount Pleasant, planned to return to teaching there after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He was at Fort Hood, Texas, preparing to leave on that tour when he and 12 others were killed in a shooting spree Nov. 5.

His legacy will live on at the college. Campus Director Peter Pavone announced at the vigil that the college will rename its lab in Seager's honor. The school will also award two scholarships each year to students who demonstrate Seager's qualities of compassion and caring, which Pavone asked those in attendance to practice in their own lives.

"Act them out every day," he said, "because then maybe violence like this won't happen again."

About 50 faculty and students attended the vigil, as did seven members of Seager's family.

"It was really nice," said Seager's cousin, Duane, of Caledonia. "It made me feel good ... so many people had cared about him."

That caring was evident when four faculty members and two students shared their favorite moments of working with and learning from Seager. Kathleen Olewinski, who knew Seager 21 years, spoke of the man's surprising moments - when Seager switched from coffee to tea for his health, how he would make certificates for his students when they mastered new skills and how he loved lemon bars on his birthday.

She described a man who was quiet and modest but cared deeply.

"He wanted all of us to succeed," said Olewinski, academic program director for the college's medical assisting program.

That desire for others' success shone through in Seager's teaching. He let students draw his blood for nursing lessons and even picked names out of a hat to determine who got the privilege.

"He had great veins, and everybody wanted to draw from Dr. Seager," said Maureen Wenzel, a lab assistant at the college.

Seager spent his nursing and military career helping "broken and shattered" people like veterans returning from war. When dealing with those patients, Olewinski said Seager told them to take it one day at a time.

"With this horrible loss, that's all I can do. I'm on autopilot," she said. "We can't change this tragedy, but we can change our compassion for each other and live Dr. Seager's legacy."